This invention relates to method and apparatus for the reading of coded labels, and more particularly, to such method and apparatus specifically designed for the reading of machine readable symbols which have been adopted in the grocery/supermarket industry and generally known as the grocery industry Universal Product Code (UPC).
Codes of the foregoing type are generally characterized as bar codes, consisting of a series of parallel light and dark bars of different widths being linear in one direction and having overall rectangular shape. Each character or digit of the code is represented by two dark bars and two light spaces. By way of example, a full description of this type of code is given in a publication entitled "U.P.C. Symbol Specification," dated May, 1973, and published by the Distribution Number Bank of Washington, D.C., which is administrator of the Universal Product Code and the UPC symbol for the Uniform Grocery Product Code Council.
Recently, a number of proposals have been made for various systems for reading such codes so as to provide the supermarket/grocery industry with the ability to label all of its products in machine readable form and, therefore, to provide check-out of merchandise via machine readable computerized equipment, which will substantially lessen the time and effort presently required to pass through the check-out counter as well as providing a complete and accurate inventory accounting system. It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved system for such purpose.